Someone has tampered with
the clocks in this house. A hand
sweeps and ticks, marks the passage
of a single monotone second, then
an era passes before next motion.
We’re told time travels on a linear path,
some great creeping thing moving
steadily from one point to next,
but the transition is not smooth. This
morning is a stuck gear, a slow turning
of screw to thumb. The same moments
ad infinitum, the exact same day
lived and relived with agonizing slowness.
For an entire lifetime, the clock is stiff
as starched sheets; for an entire lifetime
the hands do not move. Then nothing happens
and the wheels begin to spin again.
Someone is tampering with the machinery here.
Someone is fucking with time. All we are is
slaves to sunset, the metronome, the mercury
switch. Faster and faster we run, striving for
escape velocity. Eternally stuck in low earth orbit,
our timers counting down, reaching zero,
resetting like pins on a polished lane. Nothing
is novel in today. It is as we are, the same
smoke oil and gunpowder’d rust. In the beginning,
as it is in the middle, as it never reaches the end.
We are copies of copies, degrading in quality
with generational decay. Smears of black ink
chipped off acetate and plate glass.